US Politics
Trump ‘OK’ with DC statue honoring Civil War leader who fought for slavery: ‘Lot of people in this room’ agree
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President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he’d have no problem with erecting a massive statue honoring Robert E. Lee, the Civil War general who led the South in rebellion against the United States to try and preserve the enslavement of Black people — within sight of the Lincoln Memorial.
Trump made the remarks to a group of wealthy executives and donors who are contributing to the planned White House ballroom at a fundraising dinner in the State Dining Room as he also touted his plans for a grand Arc de Triomphe-style monument.
He also suggested that the ballroom fund contributors would largely agree with him about the statue to honor the icon of the Confederacy.
The president’s comments came during a long, meandering speech to the dinner attendees at a point when he was discussing his idea to erect a triumphal arch on a traffic circle in Virginia at the southern end of the Arlington Memorial Bridge.
As he pointed to the bridge and the traffic circle, he noted it has a number of columns on it and suggested that a space left between the columns was left empty due to the Civil War — which had ended a full half-century before the bridge opened. He also said there’d been a plan for a statue of Lee on the circle as early as 1902.
“It would have been OK with me — would’ve been OK with a lot of the people in this room,” he said.
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There was no audible reaction to his claim from the dinner attendees, who included oil billionaire Harold Hamm, Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman, tech impresarios Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, Trump’s Small Business Administration boss Kelly Loeffler and the family of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
Representatives from Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet’s Google, Amazon and Palantir Technologies were reportedly in attendance as well.
Regardless, Trump’s comments were historically inaccurate, as plans for the bridge — which opened in 1932 — never included a statue of Lee.
But the bridge’s location does connect the Lincoln Memorial with Arlington House, Lee’s former home, with the site intended to make the structure both a physical and symbolic connection between North and South which memorializes the dead on both sides of the American Civil War.
His suggestion that he would be amenable to a statue honoring the pro-slavery leader is consistent with other actions his administration has taken to restore tributes to Lee that were taken down or re-contextualized after the 2020 murder of George Floyd led to widespread racial justice protests.
Earlier this year, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered a portrait of Lee wearing his Confederate uniform to be restored to a place of honor at the U.S. Military Academy, Lee’s alma mater.
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The 20-foot painting had been placed in storage on orders from a Congressional commission established by a law in 2020 directing a review of tributes to former confederates by the U.S. military.
The commission had directed West Point to clear away all items that “commemorate or memorialize the Confederacy,” but an Army spokesperson told the New York Times in August that the academy was “prepared to restore historical names, artifacts, and assets to their original form and place.”
“Under this administration, we honor our history and learn from it – we don’t erase it,” the spokesperson said.
Trump has repeatedly praised Lee over the years and has suggested that the late general, who lost the Civil War, “is considered by many Generals to be the greatest strategist of them all.”
The Independent has contacted the White House and representatives of dinner attendees for comment.
“Lockheed Martin is grateful for the opportunity to help bring the President’s vision to reality and make this addition to the People’s House, a powerful symbol of the American ideals we work to defend every day,” said Jalen Drummond , vice president of Corporate Affairs for the aerospace and defense contractor.
